The past and present of minority rights in the context of migration and multiculturalism

Research seminar organized by the Network for Research on Multiculturalism and Societal Interaction (McNet) and Mcgen-network

November 25th-26th 2013University of Turku

Intensified migratory movements have resulted to nation-states drafting a great variety of policies that target minority groups and members of minority groups. Particularly, increased attention to multiculturalism in contemporary Western societies has made questions over individual and collective minority rights surface. Indeed, multiculturalism both as an ideology and état d’être has become to occupy a central stage in debates dealing with minority rights. Attempts to recognize ethnic diversity and to accommodate it into the legal and political structures of the society has, on the one hand, prompted questions over the changing nature of state citizenship, social policies, and securitization of ethnic relations, and on the other hand, over human rights, global justice and transnational communities.

This workshop will focus on the local and global phenomena related to minority rights in the context of migration and multiculturalism, both past and present. PhD students dealing with these and similar topics are encouraged to send an abstract that can be based on an article/chapter draft of a PhD dissertation, or other scholarly paper in progress.

Keynote speakers:
Outi Korhonen, Professor of International Law, University of Turku
Peter Kivisto, Richard Swanson Professor of Social Thought, Augustana College

Application procedure
NB! With funding received from Nordforsk, the organizers announce the application for travel grants for PhD students. This grant covers the travel and accommodation expenses due to participation in the seminar.

A short abstract (max. 200 words) including name, email address and affiliation, and a travel plan should be sent to following national contact persons depending on which university the applicant is affiliated with:

Students affiliated with Danish universities, should send the application to Garbi Schmidt (garbi@ruc.dk); with Norwegian universities to Kari Ludvigsen (kari.ludvigsen@uni.no); with Swedish universities to Minoo Alinia (minoo.alinia@valentin.uu.se); with Finnish universities to Auvo Kostiainen (aukosti@utu.fi); with Icelandic universities to Unnur Dís Skaptadóttir (unnurd@hi.is); and with Estonian universities to Marion Pajumets (marion@iiss.ee).

Transnational formations and ties among migrants and their descendants

Date: August 26th-27th 2013

Place: University of Iceland (Faculty of Social and Human Sciences)

Research seminar organized by the University of Iceland, Reykjavik in cooperation with The Network for Research on Multiculturalism and Societal Interaction

The seminar topic
New developments in communication technologies have had an important impact on mobility patterns as well as on the experiences and (everyday) practices of contemporary international migrants. Although being far away, migrants are able to participate in the lives of their home communities and maintain close ties with families left behind, thus creating, in this way, transnational social fields that transcend the nation-states’ borders as well as enhancing the cultural diversity of the receiving societies.

This workshop will focus on transnational practices performed by today’s migrants and their descendants. It aims to discuss the issue in its variety, including such aspects of the phenomenon as transnational families, transnational mothering, long-distance nationalism, remittances and belonging to name just a few. How is transnationalism practiced by migrants and what is the impact of transnational ties on both the sending and receiving societies? What sort of transnational practices do migrants’ descendants take part in and what sort of transnational ties do they foster?

PhD students dealing with these and similar topics are encouraged to send an abstract that can be based on an article/chapter draft of PhD dissertation, or other scholarly paper in progress.

Application procedure
NB! With funding received from Nordforsk, the organizers announce the application for travel grants for PhD students. This grant covers the travel and accommodation expenses due to participation in the seminar.

A short abstract (max. 150 words) including name, email address and affiliation, and a travel plan should be sent to following national contact persons depending on which university the applicant is affiliated with:

Students affiliated with Danish universities, should send the application to Garbi Schmidt (garbi@ruc.dk); with Norwegian universities to Kari Ludvigsen (kari.ludvigsen@uni.no); with Swedish universities to Minoo Alinia (minoo.alinia@valentin.uu.se); with Finnish universities to Auvo Kostiainen (aukosti@utu.fi); with Icelandic universities to Unnur Dís Skaptadóttir (unnurd@hi.is); and with Estonian universities to Marion Pajumets (marion@iiss.ee).

Multicultural citizenship in policy and practice: Historical and contemporary perspectives

Date: April 18th – 19th 2013

In cooperation with

The Network for Research on Multiculturalism and Societal Interaction,

University of Turku (Finland)

The seminar topic
The question of how governments should deal with an increasingly heterogeneous population in their policy-making and formulation of political practices is in the Nordic context often linked to the post-1960s overseas migration, implying that this migration created a fundamentally novel multicultural situation. Historically, however, it may be argued that the ethnic, linguistic and religious heterogeneity is nothing new in the Nordic context: Ethnic and other minorities have been present in the Nordic countries throughout history.

This workshop will discuss how the Nordic states have dealt with the historical and more recent ethnic and cultural pluralism in their definitions of national citizenship. How has the factual diversity of the citizenry in the Nordic states been dealt with within different policy fields, such as welfare, health and educational policies? To what extent – if at all – has the historical experience of dealing with pluralism had an impact on the ways the new migration has been met in the context of policy and practice?

PhD students dealing with these and similar topics are encouraged to send an abstract that can be based on an article/chapter draft of PhD dissertation, or other scholarly paper in progress.

This is a multidisciplinary and international forum providing a very good opportunity for PhD students to meet other PhD students and scholars from Nordic and Baltic universities, discuss their ongoing projects, receive comments, and to establish networks. The papers will be commented upon by leading scholars in this field. The applications including short abstracts (max. 150 words) should be sent to the national contact persons.

Application procedure
NB! With funding received from Nordforsk, the organizers announce the application for travel grants for PhD students. This grant covers the travel and accommodation expenses due to participation in the seminar.

A short abstract (max. 150 words) including name, email address and affiliation, and a travel plan should be sent to following national contact persons depending on which university the applicant is affiliated with:

Students affiliated with Danish universities, should send the application to Garbi Schmidt (garbi@ruc.dk); with Norwegian universities to Kari Ludvigsen (kari.ludvigsen@uni.no); with Swedish universities to Minoo Alinia (minoo.alinia@valentin.uu.se); with Finnish universities to Auvo Kostiainen (aukosti@utu.fi); with Icelandic universities to Unnur Dis Skaptadottir (unnurd@hi.is); and with Estonian universities to Aida Hatsaturjan (aida@tlu.ee).

The Network for Research on Multiculturalism and Societal Interaction (University of Turku, Finland)

Gender and sexuality are central parts of national imaginaries and as Yuval-Davis points out constructions of nation usually involve specific notions of manhood and womanhood. In contemporary Europe, gender and sexuality have become more and more an integrated part of racialization processes in many different ways. In the Nordic context, the gender equality discourse has been increasingly used to draw up boundaries between what are perceived as the ‘gender equal Nordics’ and the ‘patriarchal immigrants’. This has impacted not only the populist and right-wing movements’ rhetoric but also academic writings on gender and/or migration. This challenging situation raises a number of questions concerning social relations, policy making, and so on. It also raises questions in regard to epistemological and theoretical issues in relation to research on migration and minorities, gender and ethnicity, gender and migration, ethnic relations, and on gendered violence.

PhD students are welcomed to send paper proposals dealing with following themes:

1) How are gender and ethnicity articulated in constructions of ‘we’ and ‘them’ and in formation of social boundaries and hierarchies in Nordic-Baltic contexts?

2) How do individuals and groups targeted by these discourses relate to them and how do they negotiate their identities and their sense of belongingness in relation to gender, ethnicity, generation, and class?

3) How do these processes of racialization and social divisions impact academic research on gender, gendered violence, minority, and migration? What are the challenges?

4) How can we avoid racializations and sexualizations while discussing the problems related to gender inequalities and gendered violence within migrant communities?

5) What contributions have the intersectional analysis to offer, and what is meant by it?

PhD students dealing with these and similar topics are encouraged to send an abstract that can be based on an article/chapter draft of PhD dissertation, or other scholarly paper in progress. This is a multidisciplinary and international forum providing a very good opportunity for PhD students to meet other PhD students and scholars from Nordic and Baltic universities, discuss their ongoing projects, receive comments, and to establish networks.

NB! With funding received from Nordforsk, the organizers announce the application for travel grants for PhD students. This grant covers the travel and accommodation expenses due to participation in the seminar.

A short abstract (max. 150 words) including name, email address and affiliation, and a travel plan should be sent to following national contact persons depending on which university the applicant is affiliated with:

Students affiliated with Danish universities, should send the application to Garbi Schmidt (garbi@ruc.dk); with Norwegian universities to Kari Ludvigsen (kari.ludvigsen@uni.no); with Swedish universities to Minoo Alinia (minoo.alinia@valentin.uu.se); with Finnish universities to Auvo Kostiainen (aukosti@utu.fi); with Icelandic universities to Unnur Dis Skaptadottir (unnurd@hi.is); and with Estonian universities to Aida Hatsaturjan (aida@tlu.ee).

Organized by Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies (Tallinn University, Estonia) in cooperation with The Network for Research on Multiculturalism and Societal Interaction (University of Turku, Finland)

The organising committee invites proposals for presentation at the workshop “National identities versus ethnic identities – dealing with traumatic past. Paper proposals dealing with the following themes are particularly welcomed:

– Societies in transition and national/ethnic identities

– Cultural trauma and collective identities

– Political generations and nationalism

– Social cohesion and minority rights

– The politics of recognition and management of diversity

– National/indigenous minorities

Resonating the notion of cultural trauma and conceptualized by leading social scientists of our time (P. Sztompka, J. Alexander, N. Smelser, R. Eyerman), it seems to be relevant to consider the series of value conflicts provoked by the abrupt political and economic changes, sociocultural transformations of recent two decades.

The metamorphosis of culture as the mental structure of social life is slow and requires the rooting and adaptation of the changed norms, values etc. for everyday life. Category of cultural trauma allows to analyze the processes of reality by ordering a variety of meanings and practices associated with the collective and individual experience of emotions and its consequences.

Cultural trauma as a process that manifests itself in the collective consciousness of the community through a sense of involvement in the common traumatic past, will remain forever in the collective memory of the group, permanently altering its (future) identities. The aim of the workshop is to find out the fields of effect of a cultural trauma and, consequently, the mechanisms of coping with it through practices of identity constructions, thus creating possibilities for achieving social coherence through the emergence of new (national or ethnic) identities.

PhD students dealing with these and similar topics are encouraged to send an abstract that can be based on an article/chapter draft of PhD dissertation, or other scholarly paper in progress. The papers will be commented upon by leading scholars in this field. The short abstracts (max. 150 words) should be sent to national contact persons.

NB! With funding received from Nordforsk, the organizers announce the application for travel grants for PhD students enrolled in Nordic/Estonian universities. This grant covers the travel and accommodation expenses due to participation in the seminar. For more information, see instructions to apply.

Key dates and deadlines:

Deadline for abstracts and travel grant applications: April 15th, 2012

Date: March 22nd – 23rd 2012
Organized by The Department of Culture and Identity (Roskilde University, Denmark)
in cooperation with The Network for Research on Multiculturalism and Societal Interaction (University of Turku, Finland)

The aim of this seminar is to discuss and analyze premises for civil participation for young people representing diverse ethnic backgrounds in urban settings across Northern Europe. Young people of immigrant backgrounds are frequently, for example, in media and political debates, described as corrosive elements that do not and refuse having contact with the surrounding society. Such debates are often entrenched in an ethnicized and gendered perspective on criminal activities, educational drop-out, social inclusion, exclusion and segregation, and ideas of “parallel societies” and “the ghetto”. In this seminar, we will focus on alternative ways of looking on ethnic youth’s civic participation in cities across Northern Europe. Questions that we seek to raise and discuss include:

How do activities including mixing (not least in the field of aesthetics, including music, art, dance) take place in urban environments?

How and whether urban space facilitate civic participation and interaction across ethnic lines?

How and whether urban administrative measures and policies facilitate civic participation and interaction across ethnic lines?

Whether and how existing political parties and civil society organizations facilitate the participation of ethnic minority youth?

How and in what respects important educating institutions (i.e. public schools) and their strategies towards ethnic minority youth are decisive for the inclusion and exclusion of ethnic minority youth?

How processes of inclusion/exclusion of ethnic minority youth intersect with the variable of gender?

PhD students dealing with these and similar topics are encouraged to send an abstract that can be based on an article/chapter draft of PhD dissertation, or other scholarly paper in progress. The papers will be commented upon by leading scholars in this field. The seminar also features keynote speakers that will be confirmed late this year.

NB! With funding received from Nordforsk, the organizers announce the application for travel grants for PhD students enrolled in Nordic/Estonian universities. This grant covers the travel and accommodation expenses due to participation in the seminar. For more information, see instructions below.